Reasons for creating trust (Wisconsin)
I'm interested in some educated opinions or personal experiences involving elderly couple starting a trust at an advanced age. Family members of mine had a revocable living trust. I have not seen the formal document so don't know the exact start date. However, the wills I got copies of are dated 2/22/24 and they indicate that everything rolls over to the trust.
The reason I'm asking is that my first reaction to this is suspicion. For instance, the husband died 2 days after the will was signed. The wife died 18 months later. Between the two dates the house they lived in for 20+ years was sold for a nice amount. But that's all I know of. It could be that the trust was started long before that but that brings up another question. Isn't it "normal" that if someone starts a trust that they would also have wills done as a matter of course?
If they changed beneficiaries of the trust, the wills don't need changing since they simply refer to the trust, correct? There were no children to add/remove due to family squabbles or death or marriage, etc. I was told that to some degree the wills are superficial when the trust exists. Or a better way to put might be that it's superceded by the trust.
And as I said, they had no children. The only sibling I've ever known of theirs is my mother who was killed in a car accident many years prior. Their parents have passed also. And according to a somewhat reliable source, I'm not a beneficiary despite being the oldest and most closely related person to them.
Anyway, generally speaking, is it all weird for people 84/86 years old to open a trust and write basic wills? Or are the circumstances weird enough to have it looked into?